The 2022 Canterbury Preacher's Companion

150 complete sermons for Sundays, Festivals and Special Occasions – Year C

Williams, Catherine Williams

• Publisher: Canterbury Press Norwich
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781786223265
• eBook ISBN: 9781786223289
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

A longstanding annual favourite has a new editor and a new, refreshed look. What hasn't changed is its year-long reliability as a resource for preaching at the principal and the second service (for which preaching resources are scarce) every Sunday of the coming year.Ideal for preachers in all churches that use the Revised Common Lectionary, it also includes sermons for holy days, major saints' days and special occasions such as Mothering Sunday, harvest, rogation and Christmas services. If preparation time is short, the sermons are complete and can be used as they are, but they will also act as a framework for creating your own sermon texts.It also includes: - an introductory essay for preachers- all-age talks for special occasions- hymn suggestions throughout the year- an index of topics and namesA boon for hard-pressed clergy, readers and local preachers everywhere.

Ordinary Time

Trinity Sunday 12 June

Principal Service The God who Reaches Out

Prov. 8.1–4, 22–31; Ps. 8; Rom. 5.1–5; John 16.12–15

The Trinity: living relationship

Trinity Sunday. Rest assured there will be no images of clover, nor analogies of water, ice and steam, employed in heretical attempts to nail down the Trinity. The Trinity is not a doctrine to be dissected but a relationship to be experienced. We might imagine the Trinity as a closed shop. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit in an eternal dance focused inward – after all God is holiness and perfection and we are fractured, grubby, imperfect people. What would God the Trinity, perfect in every way, want with us compromised creatures?

The Trinity: relentlessly reaching out

Nevertheless, Scripture reveals this self-communicating God reaching out to humanity. Reaching out through word and symbol, calling out through the prophets and ultimately speaking out in the incarnation. God the Father sends Jesus his Son. The Father and the Son together send the Holy Spirit. It’s all there in the creeds. God the Trinity, relentlessly reaching out.

Take a look at this icon [hand out / project Rublev’s icon]. You’ll see the Trinity represented in the three figures; notice the circle is not closed. There is a space at their table for you to come close and sit. The Father, the Son and the Spirit – God the three in one – desires us. Desires you.

Our readings remind us that God desires that we have faith in him, are at peace with him, experience his grace and have hope. Our human sufferings need not be meaningless; they can be a means of deeper honing as God’s Spirit shapes us through the ups and downs of our life experiences. Whatever we face, God is relentlessly for us, and with us.

In the snippet from John’s Gospel, Jesus shows he understands that there are limits to what his disciples can bear. He reassures them that he will not leave them alone. The Spirit will come and guide them into truth. Jesus states that the Spirit will ‘speak whatever he hears’; ‘he will take what is mine and declare it to you’, sharing what he and the Father have. This is an incredible statement; the Spirit will draw them into the life of the Father and the Son. In short, the Trinity is the eternal invitation into this love. That might seem too big and difficult to get a handle on until you remember that God reaches out to each of us by name. The Trinity is reaching out for us.

Humanity: the response of resistance

Often, we resist this relentless love, imagining God as grudging, unpredictable, out to get us. We fear we are not good enough, imagining a world of transactions, in which we have to earn God’s love – the heresy of spiritual capitalism.

No! God sent his Son not to condemn the world, and not to condemn you. The Son comes to bring life – like a physician to the sick he comes, knowing we are prone to sin, prone to doubt, prone to fear. George Herbert’s wonderful poem ‘Love bade me welcome’ captures this human resistance to divine love:

Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back,

Guilty of dust and sin.

Frederick Faber (1814–63), in his hymn ‘There’s a wideness in God’s mercy’, expresses how

we make His love too narrow

By false limits of our own;

And we magnify His strictness

With a zeal He will not own.

Faber realized that we can’t tame the wildness of God’s longing, but we are invited to trust that we are God’s beloved and live out of that truth. This is the path of discipleship. Not a motorway of ‘shoulds and oughts’, but a journey of learning to love, by learning to be loved by God, the Holy Trinity. This is sheer gift. God is love. The Holy Trinity is united in love. Love bids us welcome.

The Trinity: come to the table

God’s response to Herbert’s refusal to sit at Love’s table is an assurance of atonement and forgiveness:

know you not,

says Love, who bore the blame?

Yet, Herbert still resists – saying that he will serve at the table, rather than sit at it. But God insists:

You must sit down, says Love,

and taste my meat,

so I did sit and eat.

This is love, freely given; the first movement of the First Mover, the heart of the Trinity. We are invited into this love, to experience it and live from it as God’s agents of love in the world. It’s often two steps forward and three steps back. But never fear, love picks us up, dusts us down and sets us again on the journey of loving discipleship. Come to the table. God the Trinity invites you, and all are welcome.

Come to the table of the holy Trinity.

Kate Bruce

Hymn suggestions

Love divine, all loves excelling; There’s a wideness in God’s mercy; Let us build a house where love may dwell; Come, thou fount of every blessing.

Trinity Sunday 12 June

Second Service Moving Deeper into God

Morning Ps. 29; Evening Ps. 73.1–3, 16–end; Ex. 3.1–15; John 3.1–17

Today we celebrate Trinity Sunday. Today we enter a long period of time when we celebrate the majesty, wonder, immensity and intimacy of God. God whom we experience in many ways and whom we can never fully understand or know.

When we use the word ‘Trinity’, we’re referring to the mystery of God who is both one God and experienced as three persons – traditionally called Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It’s a relationship of love. God is Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier, bound together in a dance of love that spills over and draws us in. At our baptism, we were baptized in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Baptized into God in three persons, into love.

Learning from others’ experience

The experience of the disciples is really helpful when we’re pondering the Trinity. The disciples were good and faithful Jews, brought up to worship one God – the God we see witnessed to in the Older Testament. In Exodus, Moses encountered God in the mystery of a bush full of fire but not consumed. God calls to Moses from the flames and Moses realizes he is on holy ground. He takes off his shoes and hides his face. God is transcendent, other, mysterious, awesome. This is the experience of God that the disciples grew up with.

However, their experience of God didn’t stop there. In Jesus they met God in a new way, focused in a human being. In the man Jesus, the power of God worked in a remarkable way. The old categories crumbled. Here was someone who was so close to God that he called him ‘Abba’ – ‘Daddy’. As the disciples journeyed through the experiences of Jesus’ death and resurrection, they began to see Jesus as ‘Lord’. Here was a new way of experiencing God – God with us, God prepared to die for us, God the Son.

But the experience of the disciples didn’t end there. On the day of Pentecost, they experienced God again in a new way. God the Holy Spirit filled them. They sensed within themselves the power and mystery of God gifting them courage and ability to confidently tell everyone about Jesus. From a tiny band of people, a worldwide religion was born. The disciples’ experience of God changed, grew and developed through their lives – growing richer, deeper and fuller.

Nicodemus in our Gospel reading was having similar experiences. A good Jew, he recognized something of God in Jesus, and Jesus told him that he needed to be born afresh. The Spirit of God was waiting to dwell in him, and that Spirit blows where God wills – can’t be controlled by us – but is full of surprises and challenges.

Experiencing God in new ways

What about us? What’s our experience of the living God? Sometimes we feel more at ease with one person of the Trinity than the others. You may relate best to God the Creator. You see God at work in the beauty, intricacy and immensity of the universe. You experience God as a parent – God the Father, or God the Mother. God guides and leads, nourishes and upholds, is involved in both the big picture and the tiny detail.

You may be more at ease with God the Son. You recognize God at work in the stories of Jesus. You know the stories well and can relate to them. You enjoy the idea of God as one of us – someone who walks alongside, who sets us practical examples of how to behave. God who is brother, friend, teacher, who shares our struggles and is prepared to sacrifice himself for everyone. God who has led the way through death so that we need not be afraid.

Or you may respond most easily to God the Holy Spirit. You may have had very strong experiences of God which have transformed your life. You may have dreams or visions. You may have a strong sense of the power of God to change the world. You may have pondered at length on mysteries and allow God to lead you into new experiences and challenges.

Moving deeper into God

On our Christian journey we may all start at very different places with God. But just like the disciples and Nicodemus, we are called to experience and know more of God. Exploring the persons of the Trinity we feel less comfortable with, helps us to hold all of God together in our believing. We all start from different places but we’re all journeying together as we move deeper into God. And God will surprise us on the way – ...

Table of contents

• Copyright information
• Contents
• Preface
• Preaching as a Spiritual Discipline
• Contributors
• Year C, the Year of Luke
• Advent
• Christmas and Epiphany
• Ordinary Time
• Lent
• Holy Week
• Easter
• Ordinary Time
• Sermons for Saints’ Days and Special Occasions
• All-Age Services
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